Word of the year: Shouty

‘Remind me what incel means again,’ said my husband. There was no point, since he’d forgotten twice already. I suspected a psychological barrier to learning. Incel (a label for people unhappy at being involuntarily celibate) was a runner-up for Oxford dictionaries’ word of the year, won by toxic.

But to me the word that captures the flavour of Britain this year is shouty. It identifies a trait that people dislike yet are given to. It belongs to an informal register (like not wearing a tie). Protesters are literally shouty, and metaphorically so are capital letters, some films and even aromatic food. There was sympathy, I read in the Guardian, for Theresa May being ‘surrounded by shouty men’.

Shouty belongs to a group of words expanding in number in the 19th century, such as beery or catty. They were formed freely to express ridicule or contempt.

Shouty is found earliest in a satirical poem by Leigh Hunt (not published till 1860) on the coronation of George IV: ‘How I feel betwixt ye! / Curlies, burlies, / Dukes and earlies, / Bangs and clangs of band O! / Shouty, flouty, heavy rig, and gouty, / When shall I come to a stand O!’ Leigh Hunt here uses words of various kinds ending in y. Curly had been used of hair since the late 18th century. Burly belongs to a quite different class of words ending in ly (corresponding to the German suffix lich), such as scholarly or cowardly.

Burly had meant ‘stately’ in the Middle Ages, but also ‘stout’, the meaning that endured. When he comes to earlies, Leigh Hunt is using early as a pet-form of earl.

Such pet-forms ending in y or ie were originally used for names, such as Sandy from Alexander or Bessy from Elizabeth.